During the early modern era Ottoman slavery had undergone quite a few changes. Ever since Mehmed II’s demands to establish a market in Istanbul to avoid the disruption of selling in the street, the Ottoman government bureaucratized the trade heavily. The reforms of Ebusu’ud Efendi at the end of the 16th century which sought to integrate the various madhabs of the expanding Ottoman state created further laws on slavery which were disseminated throughout the Empire’s Islamic legal system from the sheikulislam to provincial kadis. The extensive Ottoman legal concern with slaves meant that slaves not only appear in court sicils but also in the oft neglected shurut literature which served as example cases for kadis. This study examines slaves as they appear in the 1740s Sakk-i Vehbi manuscript, a shurut manual written by the Bursan judge Ahmed al-Burusevi and compares its advices with the rulings recorded in court sicils regarding slaves in and near Bursa in the 18th century. This study will attempt to show that legal theory in the Sakki-Vehbi and the practice of judges seemed to me very much in alignment with each other and as Wael Hallaq showed exist in a mutually informative dialectical relationship. When there are discrepancies, they have to do with local circumstances rather than issues in fiqh. The analysis of this relationship serves as a framework to view slavery in the 18th century Ottoman Empire and provides us an unusually detailed examination of the social history of slaves as changes in legal realities meant changes in the lived realities of slaves. Sources: Sakk-i Vehbi shurut manual, British Library OR1142 Kadi Sicilleri: ISAM kadi sicil published collection Miscellaneous published documents from the Ottoman Archive and Suleymaniye Library, Istanbul